Our Man in Japan

Dear Family and Friends,
How are you all doing? Good I hope.

Apparently the missionary email system is going to change from the ancient Novell system it`s using right now to a newer one. I`m happy about that because I don`t really like this one.

Yes one of the missions in Japan, the Hiroshima mission is being consolidated into the Fukuoka mission and Kobe mission. The change actually will happen around July 1st. I don`t think it will really affect me too much. I don`t think there`s even a chance of me transferring over there because it`ll be after the last time I transfer. It shouldn`t affect my departure date.

This past week was a little busy with Elder Oaks coming. There was a conference for the members on February 10th way up in Ibaraki, about 4 hours from here by car I think and $100 worth of tolls each way. The members here were planning on carpooling and driving up, but the only member of our branch who can drive long distances got sick a couple days before. What resulted was a couple hours of phone calls for me. I called and arranged for the other 2 members to take a train to the next area over and carpool from there. The members canceled that Wednesday night but then wanted to go Thursday morning so I had to help rearrange it. It was a mess but in the end they made it up to Ibaraki for the conference so it was all worth it.

On Wednesday night we headed up to Wakayama (4.5 hours away) and stayed for the night. In the morning we woke up and took a train at 6:13 AM and made our way over to Kobe for the conference.

The conference was from 10 AM to 12 PM and was really good. Sister McIntyre shared her testimony followed by President McIntyre. President Stevenson (The Asia North Area President) spoke next. Sister Oaks than spoke about how important the small and simple things we do are. We then sang and Elder Oaks got up to speak. He said how there`s hundreds of different things he could speak about but as he was pondering what to speak about he felt prompted that the first thing he should say was `We would now like to hear from Elder Ishi` and then sat down. Elder Ishi (An Area general authority) got up and spoke about his mission a little bit, during his talk he said something that Elder Oaks then spoke about afterwards.

Elder Oaks spoke a lot about how we don`t move up and down in the church through our various callings, just forward when we accept and fulfill callings, and back when we don`t. Elder Oaks spoke about a lot of important things but I`m not going to write them all in an email. But overall it was definitely worth the 2 and a half days worth of travel for the 2 hours of talks at the conference.

Something I`ve been focusing a lot more on since the conference is exact obedience to the promptings of the Holy Ghost. This transfer we`ve been working on obedience and I`ve been focusing on more exact obedience to the rules. However what I really felt at the conference is exactly how important being led by the Spirit is.

I think that`s about it for this email. Tomorrow is transfer calls. I think Elder Slater is going to transfer and I`ll have an opportunity for more travel this week :P.